During her 2022 Republican gubernatorial campaign, Arizona’s Kari Lake thought it’d be a good idea to not only trash the late Sen. John McCain, who served the state in Congress for 35 years, but also his supporters.
“We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we? All right, get the hell out,” the far-right candidate famously said at one event. Lake narrowly lost her race soon after.
The quote was memorable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was its counterintuitive quality. Candidates and parties, especially in a two-party system, generally want to increase their numbers as much as possible. The goal is to create a “big tent,” welcoming possible allies into the fold, rather than showing them the door.
Telling voters — who are likely to agree with a candidate on a wide range of issues — to “get the hell out” tends to be a recipe for failure.
All of this came to mind again this week after seeing Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia speak to NBC News Vaughn Hillyard about the state of her party’s presidential race. Ahead of the New Hampshire primary, the right-wing congresswoman said:
“This is a true change for the Republican Party. It says not only do we support President Trump, we support his policies, and any Republican that isn’t willing to adapt [sic] these policies, we are completely eradicating from the party.”
It wasn’t long before President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign took note of the comments and promoted them via social media.
Greene’s use of the word “eradicating” was unsettling, especially as Donald Trump uses radical rhetoric with 1930s-era antecedents.
But just as important is the message the Georgia Republican sent to Republicans everywhere: Dissent is not welcome. Greene acknowledged that the party might still have Trump skeptics, but she wanted them to know that they won’t just lose, they must also be purged from GOP politics altogether.
The message to Trump’s intraparty opponents couldn’t be more obvious. To hear this prominent surrogate for the likely Republican presidential nominee tell it, Trump skeptics shouldn’t wait around, waiting for a return to normalcy. They also shouldn’t bother to try to change the party from within.
They should instead prepare to be “eradicated.”
It’s a blueprint for a smaller party that loses competitive elections.